You can easily lose your way exploring the bald cypress forest—the world’s largest—surrounding Caddo Lake. But everyone in this swampy part of East Texas, near the town of Uncertain, knows where to find Dick and Charlie’s Tea Room. The run-down cabin, built around 1900, isn’t really a tearoom; owner Lonnie Morrell says it’s named for his father, Dick, who bought it in the seventies, and Dick’s best friend. It sits perched on stilts across from Johnson’s Ranch Marina, where a guide will ferry you for a closer look while spinning tales about ghost sightings and its possible past as a brothel or Prohibition-era speakeasy. A hand-painted sign nailed to a tree stipulates the “house rules”: “1. There ain’t any 2. There never was none 3. There ain’t gonna be none.” Although its original use remains a mystery, the structure landed a fitting role sixteen years ago when it appeared in the opening credits of HBO’s vampire series, True Blood.
This article originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of Texas Monthly with the headline “A House Worth Haunting.” Subscribe today.
